watch out
before you use thatzebra crossingcrossing the road in a foreign
land...

There are traffic rules and there are traffic rules. However the
rules, official or customary, in a foreign country are not
necessarily, and often aren't, the same as those in your home
country.

Just as Singapore has its peculiar rules, like no jaywalking
within fifty metres of the traffic light crossing, other countries
too have their own special rules.

Take the zebra crossing. Here, pedestrians have the right of way
and the vehicles are supposed to stop. In New Zealand, if you wait
at the pavement for the cars to stop, you can stand forever. One is
supposed to step on the first white strip to indicate intention to
cross. Yet other countries choose to draw their zebra strips at
traffic junctions, which means you basically still have to wait for
the green man.

One would have thought that the traffic junction is the safest
bet. The rules, however, are by no means universal. For instance,
the familiar green man does not always mean you can cross. In the
mad streets of Cairo, vehicles can tear down at breakneck speeds in
total ignorance of the red light. Suffice to say, crossing the roads
there entails risking life and limb to slip through any gap in the
whizzing traffic, although the locals seem to do it with
ease!

Even in London, which has rules similar to ours, I have learned
the hard way that a blinking green man in a busy street at
peak hour means the vehicles start moving almost instantaneously -
quite unlike at home where you can amble across, with time to spare,
even after the red man comes on for some junctions. On the other
hand, one can safely jaywalk in London without the risk of being
fined.

The hardest habit to break by far, and the most dangerous too, is
that of looking at the "wrong" side of the road in a country which
follows the right-hand-drive rule, such as the United States, China
and continental Europe. One has to be on constant alert that one's
orientation is reversed, not just for crossing roads but for simple
acts like going to the correct side of a bus to board. If your trip
is long, it means you have to re-orientate again when you get home.
The danger is magnified for those driving in foreign lands - stories
of people returning from overseas and driving into the right lane,
instead of the left, are not unheard of.

Then there will be the odd place where cars are allowed to move
in totally opposite directions on the same lane. I remember a town
in Portugal with this rule, perhaps due to the narrowness of the
steep cobbled-stone streets.

Familiar signs or not, the next time you want to cross a road in
a foreign country, pause and observe how the locals do it. As the
saying goes, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" and you should be
fine.